MU scholarship donor aims at rural students

Thursday

Jun 26, 2008 at 12:01 AM

A University of Missouri alumnus has donated $1.4 million to a program that provides four-year scholarships worth as much as $15,000 each to one student in every Missouri county and the city of St. Louis.

Mark and Stephanie McAndrew gave the donation to improve access to college for students in Clark County. The scholarship's official title - the Jack and Ladene McAndrew Flagship Scholarship - is named after Mark McAndrew's parents, who raised him in the northeast Missouri town of Kahoka.

"So many kids who live in a rural environment feel that they don't have the opportunity to go to college," Mark McAndrew said in a prepared statement. "When I was in Clark County a few years ago, I saw one of my high school classmates. He was very bright, in the top 10 of his class, but he never made it to college. I realized how unfortunate it is that people like him and so many other students never have the chance to go to college. I hope this scholarship program makes it possible for more students to have that chance."

Mark McAndrew is chairman and chief executive officer of Torchmark, a holding company specializing in life and supplemental health insurance. He lives in McKinney, Texas.

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